


Team Don Quixote

by quixoticpenguin



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 14:45:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2352143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixoticpenguin/pseuds/quixoticpenguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mac just wants to get her first show on News Night right, but Charlie won't let her off the hook until she satisfies his curiosity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Team Don Quixote

**Author's Note:**

> All characters are property of Aaron Sorkin's brilliant mind and HBO's The Newsroom. I'm just getting an idea out of my head.
> 
> Based on Aaron Sorkin's reveal from the "We Just Decided To" commentary. Greg asked Aaron how Charlie Skinner found out about the Don Quixote conversation Will and Mac had earlier in the episode. Aaron responded that Mac told Charlie, that at some point in the evening Charlie probably pulled Mac aside and asked her. This is my take on how that conversation went.
> 
> I'm new to this, never written fic before, so thanks for reading (if anyone happens to find it).

“How is it going?”

“Jesus, Charlie!” Mac cried, pivoting to find Charlie Skinner standing about half a foot closer to her than she would like considering she had been completely oblivious to his approach.

“How is it going?” Charlie repeated, settling into a short-backed office chair. The chairs in the newsroom were far too short than must be comfortable. Everyone bustling about was so tall; they must look like giants hunched in their chairs. Mac considered anyone tall enough to escape the daily torture of heels too tall.

“You can’t just sneak up on people in a newsroom!” Mac protested, ignoring his question. She hadn’t quite been able to choke down the emotional cocktail of guilt, frustration, and righteous indignation that Will had mixed up in her, and there was breaking news to be dealt with. Important breaking news! More important than certain egos, although the comparable size of said egos might rival the oil spill encroaching on Louisiana. “This is a high pressure environment!”

Charlie cocked an eyebrow. “Didn’t you just come back from 26 months in combat?”

“Yes. Why--”

“Shouldn’t you be more accustomed to handling high pressure situations?”

“It’s hardly--”

“Am I supposed to be reassured that your reporting was accompanied by such grace under fire?” Charlie leaned back into his chair, amused at his own condescension. 

Mac folded her arms and drew herself up. Heels, hellacious as they were, had certain advantages when asserting one’s presence. “Do I need to be here for this barrage of rhetorical questions, or can I please do my job?”

“How is it going, Mac?” Charlie asked again, a touch of softness to his voice that weakened her resolve.

“Don Quixote never said die, and neither will I.” She gathered her clipboard and mic pack from the desk and headed toward the gaggle of associate producers hunched over office phones. She’d asked one of them for . . . something. She couldn’t remember who she asked. Tonight was her one chance to get Will on her side, to get him to lend her a modicum of trust, to overcome his anger and share with him her vision of what this show could be . . . and she couldn’t even remember if she was looking for a man or a woman.

“What the fuck does--”

“God dammit, Charlie!” Mac yelped as the contents of her arms crashed to the floor. She caught a couple of quick glances, but everyone was too busy to really notice how flustered she was.

“--Don Quixote have to do with any of this?” Charlie finished. He pushed his way past two young men comparing their findings, following Mac through the bullpen.

God, they all look so young. Like teenagers playacting _All the President’s Men_. She knew intellectually that Jim was young, but he didn’t _feel_ young. He was her right hand. He had seen more of the worst of humanity than reporters three times his age, and he had been by her side when men died in her arms and the carnage war made her forget why she chose to leave her life and subject herself all of it in the first place.

Well, she didn’t choose. Not really. Afghanistan was the lesser of two punishments, and the only way she had a chance of saving any part of herself. Will’s hurt and rage would have consumed her if she had stayed. Sometimes, she felt guilty she had deprived him of using her as a punching bag, but running--running far--was her only hope that maybe she could come back to him someday.

“Are you listening to me?” Charlie’s gravelly voice cut through her inner monologue.

“Now why would I do that?” Mac asked, drenching her nerves in a solid coating of sarcasm.

“Mackenzie!”

“Of course I’m listening to you, Charlie! You’re my boss!”

Charlie shrugged. “Will’s your boss.”

“At least until Friday.” Mac stopped walking to survey the room. It bustled with energy, full of journalists and producers who hadn’t learned the wrong lessons yet. Or the hard ones. Like how big mistakes had big consequences. Like how your new-boss-ex-boyfriend would pay $3 million just to be able to fire you every Friday. “I’m just trying to find . . . I don’t know her name. I don’t know any of their names.” She thought she was looking for a woman. That seemed right. God, why couldn't she remember? If she couldn't get this right, how was she supposed to step into a control room for the first time in two years and do her job?

“Is her name Don Quixote?” Charlie came to a stop next to her.

“Don Quixote was a man.”

“There’s no need to be sexist,” Charlie rumbled, looming over the IT guy’s shoulder. Was his name Nate? No, Neil. Yes, Neil. Unfortunately, Neil wasn’t who she was looking for, although if she had the time, she would have rescued him from the scrutiny of his boss’s boss’s boss . . . something like that.

“ _I’m_ Don Quixote,” Mac replied offhandedly, eyes scanning the serious faces in front of her. The Coast Guard. That was it. She has asked one of them to get a statement from the Coast Guard.

“You’re a man?” Charlie was still watching Neil work, completely ignorant of the strain his presence was causing the poor guy. Or maybe Charlie was enjoying it.

“You know what I mean.”

“I’ll be honest with you, I really don't. Has New York been invaded by giant windmills, and I didn’t know about it?”

“Don’t be silly, Charlie. Even CNN would have reported on giant windmills marching down Sixth Avenue.”

“Mac.”

Mac turned her head to level Charlie’s stare. She remembered the first time she met him. Will had introduced them at a holiday party somewhere. He cited Mackenzie as the best producer in news, which had been flattering if untrue, and Charlie could easily have discounted Will’s endorsement as blind affection. They’d only been dating for a few months. But Charlie hadn’t. Instead, Charlie spent the night sharing stories and asking opinions and treating Mac as an equal. For the first time, Mac saw herself as an equal. They became Charlie _and_ Mac.

Team Will.

“I’m trying to get back on the team, Charlie, but the team is really difficult to work with when the team is angry with you for albeit perfectly justifiable reasons that ultimately should be discounted or at least worked through because I can do some good on the team if the team would just get past its huge ego and stop renegotiating my contracts!”

“You’re mixing your metaphors and sounding a little crazy, and I still don’t know why Don Quixote is anchoring the news.”

“Don Quixote isn’t anchoring the news; he’s producing it. The horse is anchoring.”

“Are Don Quixote and the horse on the same team?”

“Who knows?!” Mac snaps, throwing her hands up.

Charlie’s hand is on her shoulder, gently guiding her into one of the short-backed chairs. “I know this is possibly the hardest night of your life, Mac, but you have got to hold it together if you want to fight your windmills.

“Not the hardest night of my life,” Mac muttered. “I did get stabbed in the stomach during a riot, you know.”

“Was getting stabbed in the stomach worse than this?”

_No._

“What team are you talking about?” Charlie asked gently, still hovering over Mac in her chair.

Mac sighed, feeling the weariness of two years of running dust itself off in her bones. “Team Will. Protecting him from the smallness of those who would tear him down, especially himself. Encouraging his talent and holding him to standard above the one he holds himself to. You remember.”

“I do.” Charlie smiled. “I’m glad you do, too. I’m glad you’re still on the team.”

“Am I?”

“I think so. After all, I’m the real Don Quixote. I make all decisions about the team roster.”

Mac snorted. “I thought I was mixing my metaphors.”

“We’ll need a team name,” Charlie announced as he walked away. “The Windmills seems a little defeatist, seeing as how that ended for our hero, but I think any other obscure references might make us seem elitist."

“No, we’re anything but that,” Mac replied dryly, heaving herself from her chair and organizing her sheets of research and notes.

“Good show!” Charlie bellowed across the newsroom.

“Good . . . show,” Mac finished lamely, realizing a beat too late that Charlie had left, and she was shouting at no one.

And she still needed the information from the Coast Guard. Who was in charge of that, again? Maggie had briefly introduced her to a few associate producers at the same time. It must have been one of them. After all, not too many were left after Don's people left en masse. Granted, she had backed Will's play and told them to get out, but a few extra hands wouldn't hurt considering they had thrown out the run down.

Across the room, a young woman stood up to pass a sheaf of papers to Jim. Mac vaguely remembered asking her to get something.

“Kendra!” she shouted, the name suddenly coming to her.

“Yeah?” The woman took a few steps towards Mac, but her phone cord impeded any further progress.

Mac strode across the room toward her, professionalism settling back into place like a suite of armor. “Were you the one I asked to call the Coast Guard?”

“No, I was the one--”

“Oh, never mind.” Mac gave up and turned toward the control room. A new battlefield awaited her inside, a terrifying one. It was one she had to win, though, if she wanted to win the war.

Was that a third metaphor? Charlie wouldn't let her get away with that.

Mac pushed the glass door open and stepped into the room inside. Facing her was a wall of monitors. A towering wall. Action zipped by in the background of the shot as Will entered the studio with some notes. He looked tense but confident. They were breaking a big story, a story that had risks and could mean the end of everything before it even started if they got even one thing wrong. Considering that, he was astonishingly calm.

Mac stared at the screens, watching Will settle into the anchor’s desk. Team Will takes on the windmills.

At least until Friday.


End file.
